Sunday, March 10, 2013

World's Smallest Aquarium With Fish

Siberian craftsman Anatoly Konenko is responsible for the
smallest aquarium in the world. A glass cube measuring 30 x 24 x 14 mm, filled
with multicolor stones and sand, contains 10 ml of water for a tiny fish. It
also have a little water purification filter to keep the water healthy for
fish. Only baby fish can fit inside the tiny glass cube that is the world’s
smallest aquarium.

Anatoly Konenko has been fiddling around with
micro-miniatures for 30 years – he was the first such craftsman in Siberia. He worked out how to write on rice grains, poppy
seeds even human hair, and created the necessary micro-instruments to do this.

The world’s smallest aquarium isn’t Anatoly Konenko’s first
record. In 2002, his micro-book that measured less than 1 sq. mm entered the
Guinness Book of Records. But notwithstanding its size, it adhered to all
rules: offset printing, hardback binding and all. Meanwhile, the
micro-miniaturist’s most recent accomplishment until now was the smallest ever
functioning mousetrap: 6 by 3mm.

Nevertheless, Anatoly Konenko has plenty more
micro-masterpieces up his sleeve, including a violin for a grasshopper, a camel
caravan that fits inside a needle ear, an alphabet inscribed on a hair, a zoo
that balances on a dragonfly’s wing and the most stunning display of all: a
model Eiffel tower that teeters on a mosquito’s antenna. Meanwhile, Konenko has
gone one better than forging a shoe for a flea – which he insists is no hard
task – and made it a set of jewellery, including necklaces and pendants.

Anatoly Konenko has taken his works to the US, Germany,
France, the Czech Republic,
Spain, Japan and China. His works can be found in
many museums around the world, in private collections and in libraries. The
presidents of Russia, Korea, Belarus,
the Czech Republic
and Slovenia
treasure his masterpieces. And who knows what place the world’s smallest
aquarium from Siberia will call home.